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Warranties and Promises
A warranty is a promise by the seller that an offering will perform as the seller said it would. The UCC
makes a distinction between two types of warranties. The first is an expressed warranty, which is an
oral or written statement by the seller regarding how the product should perform and the remedies
available to the consumer in the event the offering fails.
An implied warranty is an obligation for the seller to provide an offering of at least average quality,
beyond any written statements. For example, when you buy a new car, there is an implied warranty that it
will run as promised after you drive it off the lot. You also have the right to expect average quality for any
characteristic of a product that you buy online, except for those characteristics specifically described in
the online material. If you were able to inspect the product before you bought it, such as looking at it in a
store, the implied warranty only applies to those aspects you couldn’t inspect or observe in the store.
Where the law gets tricky is when it comes to other forms of writing. Marketing messages, whether
written in a brochure or advertisement or stated by a salesperson, are considered implied warranties. Any
written statement about what the offering does has to be true, or it violates the UCC’s definition of an
implied warranty (and is therefore punishable by law).
Keep in mind that a salesperson can create an implied warranty in an e-mail or during an online chat
session if he or she makes a promise. Even if the salesperson says something that contradicts a company’s
written material elsewhere, the consumer has the right to believe what the salesperson says. As such, the
salesperson promise is legally binding.
Protecting Your Company
As marketer, you have an obligation to protect your company from consumers who might not have honest
intentions. For example, have you noticed how you sometimes have to reproduce a strange-looking set of
letters or words before you are allowed to make a purchase when buying something online? That simple
step prevents automatic ordering by bots. A bot, which is short for robot, is a kind of program that
performs automatic functions online. One of those functions could be to purchase products, such as
tickets to a highly desirable sporting event, that the buyer can then resell at a higher price. Or a bot could